Finding clients online and making the most of your website is such an important part of any more clients marketing campaign.

Over the years I have seen huge amounts of time and money wasted on producing good-looking websites that aren’t set up to generate more clients and end up being expensive white elephants.

I’ve just finished mapping a website strategy with a client and I thought you might be interested in some key strategies we worked on that you could use on your own site:

1. Get started by thinking about your clients’ typical business issues.
They are searching for ways to overcome problems and challenges and want to know how your services can help them.

Your content needs to focus on their issues and how your services would be a solution. The vast majority of websites tend to be totally self-promotional and don’t connect with their potential clients; they drone on about how good they are and how long they have been in business for.

If you bear in mind that you have around 8 seconds to win their attention and get them to explore your site further, it’s not a great way to start a business relationship that leads to prospects becoming customers.

So think in depth about your ideal client and ask:

What problems and issues do they have?

What information are they looking for?

What would they be interested to learn?

How can you win their attention?

This will give you ideas to help build rapport by writing compelling and relevant content.

2. The homepage is at the heart of your site.
It needs to be a guide to content and resources you want to share.

So in order to get visitors to stay and engage, your homepage needs to be about the value you can add to their business.

Essentially this boils down to giving them an insight into the results and outcomes your services deliver. They want to know how you can help them and why they should choose you over a competitor.

With this in mind, the words you use are crucial. Don’t just cut and paste text from your brochure or leaflets, use the tried and tested AIDCA method. It’s a method that many journalists use and is a simple way to write effective copy even if you have not written before.

AIDCA is an acronym that outlines the process you want your visitors to take: Attention, Interest, Desire, Conviction and Action.

Your words need to get their attention, capture their interest, motivate their desire, prove you deliver results and get them to take action.

The biggest challenge your site has is winning the attention of visitors. The best way to do this is to use a compelling headline that relates to their situation. The most effective headlines fall into three areas:

The ‘How to’ headline – this type of headline tells visitors about something you know that they are interested in and want to learn more about

The ‘Problem’ headline – capture their attention by relating to an important business issue or challenge

The ‘Question’ headline – this headline style asks visitors a question that you know they need an answer to

The headline is so important and worth spending a bit of time on. Think about your clients’ issues and what they want to solutions to.

These strategies are very different to standard website design approaches. If your website is not continuously generating leads and enquires then consider applying the above ideas.

Take a good hard look at your website and think how you can apply the ideas I have shared:

As I found out running my own business, if you don’t go forward, you go back. No matter what you do at some point most of your clients will leave. That’s a fact. Every year, [and we did have a fantastic attitude to customer service and beating expectations] we lost 5% of our client base. That’s a huge amount of sales and profit to recover before growth kicks in.

Let’s cut to the chase. Marketing and growing your business needs to be the number one priority of any business owner.

Without a clear “make it happen attitude” to marketing and finding clients you won’t get the most out of your business. A random scattergun approach to marketing gets you so far and will ultimately hold you back. On the other hand a client winning marketing and sales strategy puts you in the driving seat to grow sales and Income continuously. That’s my experience.

So if you want and know you and your business can do better but realise that it will be a long haul if you try do it on your own, then why not invest in some help, support, experience, know-how and a proven, structured marketing approach with a business owner that has been in your shoes?